The Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC) is asking for your help in protecting pollinators from pesticides by providing some information about your experience with pesticide effects on your bees. They are members of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Pesticide Program Dialog Committee, an advisory committee that provides input to EPA staff and decision-makers.

The PPDC Pollinator Protection Workgroup (which the committee is a part of) has been tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of the pesticide label in controlling pesticide damage to pollinators and suggesting improvements in label language to protect bees. As part of this effort, the workgroup is interested in finding out if there are crops or locations that you know to be particularly problematic for acute poisonings (an acute poisoning is one that happens quickly and is usually a result of exposure to a high dose of a pesticide, where the word pesticide includes not only insecticides, but also fungicides and herbicides). A few questions will also be asked about longer-term hive dwindling and hive loss, and the workgroup will be looking for any correlations between your observations and the types of crops your bees have foraged on. Your help in gathering this information is greatly appreciated.

The information you provide is anonymous and will be grouped with other beekeepers' data, so you will not specifically be identified. If you would like a copy of the survey results, there is a box at the end of the survey to enter your e-mail address. This information will be removed prior to submission of the data to U.S. EPA.

Click here to take the survey. Please forward this link along to your beekeeping friends and/or colleagues in the industry. Input from urban and hobby beekeepers is welcomed, as well.

Time is of the essence, as it would be good to generate as much data as possible before the PPDC meeting on May 3, 2012, although survey results will be accepted through the end of May.

Background

The Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee (PPDC), originally established in 1995, was renewed in October 2009 for two more years under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. This Committee provides a forum for a diverse group of stakeholders to provide feedback to the pesticide program on various pesticide regulatory, policy and program implementation issues. Topics of discussion at past meetings have included the following: inerts disclosure, registration review, spray drift, non-animal testing, antimicrobial pesticides, endangered species, reduced risk pesticides, labeling, minor uses, ecological standards, fees for service, experimental use permits, environmental marketing claims, outreach to the public, and several implementation issues emanating from the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.